I am Vietnamese but I was born in the Phillippines and raised in Canada. It's cool to say that now but when I was younger I didn't appreciate it as much. I came to Canada when I was 3 years old. I only spoke Vietnamese at the beginning so you can imagine how to difficult it was for me to make friends in Kindergarten.
I felt different, I knew I was different. Imagine getting pulled out of class every now and then just to be with a private teacher to learn English. Kids would laugh at me because I couldn't say a simple world like "Apple" properly. While other kids were learning how to do math equations, I was learning my colours & shapes ( in English ). I would get made fun of with the food I brought for lunch because it "smelt" bad, or even the way I was dressed. It really F*cked with my head after, I couldn't be myself without getting judged.
Fast Forward to High School...
First year of high school was brutal. I had such a low self-esteem already and I would cry going to school. The teachers would butcher the hell out of my asian name, leaving me with embarrassment and misery in front of the other students ( yes they made fun of it too ) I would come up with so many excuses not to go to school and skipped so many classes because of it. I was too afraid to tell my parents what was going on because I didn't want to disappoint them and betray them. Not to mention, my school was full of Caucasian/French kids, I was the minority. I still made friends through it all but I felt like the outcast. Nobody understood what I was going through. My classmates would make racist jokes about asians, how they are "disgusting" and "ugly". They would come up to me and ask me if I'm good at math or if I eat dog at home, sadly I didn't inherit the math part ( LOL ).
Anyways, at one point I couldn't take it anymore and begged my parents to transfer school. From there on my life changed. I transfered to a school that was multi-cultural, where I can truly be myself. It took awhile to get to this point but I'm happy my parents allowed me to transfer. Now, I can say I am so honoured to be Vietnamese. Our food, our culture, our language is just so beautiful. I have the confidence to embrace who I am as a person. I wish I had that confidence early on because I shouldn't care what people say or think. What people say doesn't define who I am.
I hope to the person that's reading this gets a better understanding and open their eyes. Cultural acceptance is taboo. I want to open this discussion. Please do not be judgemental to others, be kind to one another. Thank you for reading my story. Feel free to share your experiences with me <3
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